For up-to- date team by team 1acs go here

1AC as of 1/29

CONTENTION ONE IS THE STATUS QUO:

Small farms are failing due to the international agricultural market system.

T.S. Jayne, Professor, International Development at Michigan State, D. Mather, Assistant Professor, International Development at Michigan State, and E. Mghenyi, graduate student, Michigan State University, 2005, “Smallholder Farming in Difficult Circumstances: Policy Issues for Africa,” http://www.ifpri.org/events/seminars/2005/smallfarms/sfproc/SO3_Jayne.pdf

The prevailing international agricultural trade policy environment is both hypocritical and not supportive of the small farm. International donors try to convince African governments of the virtues of liberalization and open markets, but then subsidize their agriculture and affect world prices for African imports and exports in the process (World Bank 2000). Are these subsidies (and the food aid generated from them) affecting the long-term competitiveness of African agricultural production and agricultural transformation?
There is widespread dissatisfaction among developing countries with the framework for international agricultural trade agreements. In particular, access to developed country markets has not been achieved to the promised extent, and many developing countries have experienced import surges following trade liberalization. Moreover, the Agreement on Agriculture appears to have been
designed largely with “developed country agriculture” in mind, as it institutionalizes the productionand trade- distorting practices employed by the most powerful countries. These countries now enjoy a unique privilege among WTO members, in the sense that the agreement gives them the legal right to continue to affect agricultural markets through their production and trade subsidies. Each year OECD countries provide roughly $50 billion per year in development assistance, while subsidizing their agricultural production by anywhere from US$350 to US$500 billion per year (McCalla 2001). This is greater than the GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa (Wolgin 2001). Some of these
subsidies may help African countries, such as those that are net importers of grains. Recent OXFAM and IFPRI reports draw specific attention to the need for changes in developed country agricultural policies and a more level playing field in global agricultural trade agreements to raise agricultural growth and reduce poverty in Africa and other parts of the developing world. For developed country governments and their citizenry who are truly committed to making globalization work for poor people, most of whom are in agriculture, a more serious public discussion of agricultural protectionism in developed countries and its effects on global poverty will need to be forthcoming.
The real debate on globalization is, ultimately, not about the efficiency of markets, nor aboutthe importance of modern technology. The debate, rather, is about the inequality of power (Sen 2000). The future of the small farm in much of Africa will hinge on national and international negotiations regarding access to developing country markets for goods produced by African farmers and the international supply and price effects of multilateral trade agreements.


Assistance means development assistance
Maisel. 2006. Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Clinical Program, Florida International University College of Law (Peggy, THE ROLE OF U.S. LAW FACULTY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: STRIVING FOR EFFECTIVE CROSS-CULTURAL COLLABORATION. Pg. 10. http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=peggy_maisel. )

The term “assistance” is important to understand because it is central to the development work of the 1860’s and differs from the notion of collaboration in this article. While the term is not clearly defined in articles on Law and Development, “assistance activities” and “assistance projects” seem to be specific development work funded by foundations and U.S. agencies committed to the promotion of development or modernization in Third World nations.

Clean water, agriculture, and nutrition is public health assistance
Angyal – professor of English and Environmental Studies – 89 (Andrew, Lewis Thomas, p 89, AG)
Thomas would like to see the combined resources of the developed world used to alleviate the problems of disease, poverty, and malnutrition, rather than see matters left as they are, with nature taking its course—toward mass famine, ecological disaster, global warfare, or a population crash, the combined effects of which could lead to human extinction. The time is short and much needs to be done, he warns. What the third world needs is appropriate small-scale public-health assistance; we must correct the immediate problem of contaminated drinking water, we need improvements
in agriculture and human nutrition and better methods for treating tropical infectious diseases, especially parasitic diseases. In short, the underdeveloped nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America need to acquire the same level of basic hygiene achieved in Europe and America before the advent of modern medicine.


Contention 2 is Harms
Advantage 1 is Poverty
Small farms are the only way to solve poverty- absent increasing market access to small farms current massive corporate domination against small communities will continue to destroy any type of person food sovereignty.
Laura Carlsen, director of the IRC Americas Program, October 25, 2006, "The World Needs its Small Farmers,", http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3641
In many countries, the guarantors of food supplies—small farmers—are being driven out of production by agricultural imports from the United States and other developed countries under free trade agreements.
Promotion of high-yield crops has increased the volume of food production in some regions, but has also created greater vulnerability and eroded agricultural biodiversity by supplanting native varieties that are often better adapted to local dietary needs and ecosystems.
In the midst of this crisis, the FAO's slogan this year: “Investing in agriculture for food security—the whole world will profit” is off the mark.
No doubt the countryside requires more investment to produce food and feed its own inhabitants. The FAO points out that foreign aid to agriculture has fallen from $9 billion per year in the early 1980s to less than $5 billion in the late 1990s. Except in countries like Argentina, where large-scale soy production has exploded, most countries are seeing a decrease in investment, employment, and income generation in their rural sectors. The irony that 70% of the world's hungry live in rural areas is proof that the world's farmers need help—and fast.
But investment in agriculture, not surprisingly, tends to flow to sectors that generate profit. In developing countries, public funding for the rural sector has been decimated by structural adjustment programs, and both private and public investment is overwhelmingly oriented toward agri-business for export.
The profit motive will not solve hunger because that is not its purpose. In fact, it has done much to skew both production and distribution of the world's food supply. Its capacity to provide a long-term solution is even more doubtful, since the high-yield models promoted by transnational seed, biotech, and agricultural trading companies (often the same conglomerates) decrease the ability of the soil to produce the food we need in the future. Monocropping, chemical use, and intensive natural resource use and contamination, produce food and profits while generating costs passed on to the next generation.
The profit ends up benefiting not “the whole world” but a very narrow group of large producers and traders. In both developed and developing countries, the model has led to a sharp divide between a small group of industrial farmers and millions of small farmers on the verge of economic collapse.
As they collapse, their land either goes out of food production or is gobbled up by large landowners. The rate of land reconcentration is turning the clock back on hard-won struggles for social justice throughout Latin America.
The threat posed by a free trade agricultural model can be seen in Mexico, the classic example of a developing nation plunged head-first into a market economy. There the price of corn paid the nearly 3 million corn farmers fell 50% between 1999 and 2004, as massive U.S. imports flooded the Mexican market. This in turn led to a massive conversion of farmers to migrants.
Did economic integration in agriculture enable the nation to import cheap food and solve hunger? Let's look at the statistics. The price of tortillas to consumers rose 380% since NAFTA went into effect. Mexico recently reported that more than one million children under five, or 12.7%, are chronically malnourished. In the countryside, where food is grown, the percentage is nearly double.
At the same time, and often in the same regions, obesity has risen at a rate unparalleled anywhere else in the world. The percentage of obese or overweight adults increased from 35.5% in 1988 to 70% in 2006. Changes in diet due to importation of processed foods and immigration's cultural impact are among the prime culprits.
The world as a whole now faces this dual crisis of malnutrition and obesity, which has resulted from economic polarization, cultural changes, and a decline in the quality of our food supply.
A concept of “food security” that posits that it doesn't matter if food is imported or grown at home is highly compatible with globalization but it ignores both the plight and potential of small farmers. Without protecting their livelihoods, they will remain in poverty and constitute the ranks of the hungry. Without recognizing the contributions they make to society—not only in food production but also in ecosystem conservation, social cohesion, traditional knowledge, and cultural diversity—we stand to lose irredeemable public goods.
In contrast to the food security paradigm, many grassroots farmers' organizations have adopted the term “food sovereignty” to describe the right of a people or nation to produce and consume its own food. They call for government and global policies that enable small farmers to continue to farm.
The FAO is not proposing that small farmers be driven from agriculture or that investment flow only to large competitive interests. However, its unfortunate slogan not only does nothing to correct this situation, it reinforces the concepts at the heart of the current crisis. An increase in investment without a serious critique of the current model of agriculture could actually exacerbate rather than resolve the problem. The results of the market-based, large-scale, hi-tech approach have not only been inadequate; they have been downright counterproductive in rural areas throughout the world.
There can be no solution to hunger that doesn't have small farmers at its center. Peasant and indigenous farmers in developing countries cannot peacefully coexist with industrialized, monopolized agriculture without regulations and policies in their favor. Even though they sell for consumption in local markets they are forced to compete with imports while saddled with disadvantages that include their small scale, lack of capital, and U.S. farm subsidies.
Hunger is a disease whose “cure” is in prevention. Up to now, few proposals that would support small-scale agriculture have made headway with policymakers. It's time for the FAO, other international agencies, and national governments to restore the emphasis where it should be—on the small farmers.



Small farms are key to genetically diversified food 3 reasons
James K Boyce, Department of Economics & Political Economy Research and Environmental research at the University of Massachusetts, July 2004, “A Future for Small Farms? Biodiversity and Sustainable Agriculture”. Political Economic Research Institute, ideap/wp86.html
Around the world, it is generally small farms – especially those in the Vavilov centers – that practice high-diversity agriculture. Not only do individual small farmers often choose to cultivate several varieties of the same crop, but also, and probably more importantly, different farmers in a given locality often cultivate different varieties. Large farms, in contrast, are more likely to sow a single variety over a wide area. This inverse relationship between farm size and varietal diversity has several explanations.
First, high-diversity farming is generally more labor-intensive than low-diversity farming. It takes more time and effort to cultivate varieties with different sowing dates, harvest times, and other requirements than to practice varietal monoculture. Considerable labor also is needed to maintain the physical infrastructure – such as watercourses and terraces – that often supports high-diversity agriculture. As we know from the many studies of the relationship between farm size and labor use, smaller farms have a comparative advantage in labor-intensive operations. This is because they rely more on family labor, the ‘real cost’ of which is lower than the wage of hired labor, and because insofar as they do use hired laborers, small farmers have fewer supervision problems (not only is supervision easier on small farms, but also the need for supervision may be less by virtue of the narrower social distance between employer and employee).9
Second, high-diversity agriculture depends on the farmers’ knowledge of different crop varieties and their relationships to microhabitat variations. Small farmers are the repositories of this knowledge. Without them, it would be harder not only to sustain agricultural biodiversity, but also to know the attributes of the varieties that are being sustained. Indigenous cultures often are particularly rich in this knowledge. For example, the Mixe language, spoken by maize farmers in southern Oaxaca, Mexico, has words for ‘a greater and richer number of stages of plant development (germination, flowering, leaf and whorl development, appearance of black color at base of kernels, etc.) than those existing in conventional scientific literature.
Third, small farmers often predominate in ‘marginal’ agricultural environments where the spread of ‘modern’ varieties has been held in check by unfavorable growing conditions. Hilly terrain, as in the highlands of southern Mexico and Guatemala, is less suitable for monoculture and mechanization; similarly, in deeply flooded parts of the Bengal delta, the short-statured ‘highyielding’ (that is, highly fertilizer-responsive) varieties cannot be grown. Such lands are relatively unattractive targets for appropriation and concentration by landowning elites. At the same time, they often have exceptionally high degrees of microenvironmental variation, which favors varietal diversification. In a single village in Oaxaca, for example, researchers Raúl and Luis García-Barrios (1990) found that the campesinos distinguished among 17 different environments in which they grew 26 distinct varieties of maize. Similarly, Maori weavers in New Zealand recognize more than 80 distinct varieties of flax (Shand, 1997, p. 11, citing Heywood, 1995).

Biodiversity has been shown to double yields- also it prevents mass crop loss due to prevention of problems like disease.
Mae-Wan Ho, Professor of Biophysics at Catania University, and Lim Li Ching, Professor of Government at Hamilton College and a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution, June 15, 2003, “A GM-Free Sustainable World”, www.indsp.org/ISPreportSummary.php
Empirical evidence from a study conducted since 1994 shows that biodiverse ecosystems are two to three times more productive than monocultures [170, 171]. In experimental plots, both aboveground and total biomass increased significantly with species number. The high diversity plots were fairly immune to the invasion and growth of weeds, but this was not so for monocultures and low diversity plots. Thus, biodiverse systems are more productive, and less prone to weeds as well!
Proving with stunning results that planting a diversity of crops is beneficial (compared with monocultures), thousands of Chinese rice farmers have doubled yields and nearly eliminated its most devastating disease without using chemicals or spending more [172, 173]. Scientists worked together with farmers in Yunnan, who implemented a simple practice that radically restricted the rice blast fungus that destroys millions of tons of rice and costs farmers several billion dollars in losses each year.
Instead of planting large stands of a single type of rice, as is typical, farmers planted a mixture of two varieties: a standard hybrid rice that does not usually succumb to rice blast and a much more valuable glutinous or ‘sticky’ rice known to be very susceptible. The genetically diverse rice crops were planted in all the rice fields in five townships in 1998 (812 hectares), and ten townships in 1999 (3 342 hectares).
Disease-susceptible varieties planted with resistant varieties had 89% greater yield, and blast was 94% less severe than when grown in monoculture. Both glutinous and hybrid rice showed decreased infection. The hypothesis is fairly clear for glutinous rice. If a variety is susceptible to a disease, the more concentrated those susceptible types are, the more easily disease spreads. It is less likely to spread when susceptible plants are grown among plants resistant to the disease (i.e. a dilution effect occurs). The glutinous rice plants, which rise above the shorter hybrid rice, also enjoyed sunnier, warmer and drier conditions that discouraged fungal growth. Disease reduction in the hybrid variety may be due to the taller glutinous rice blocking the airborne spores of rice blast, and to greater induced resistance (due to diverse fields supporting diverse pathogens with no single dominant strain). The gross value per hectare of the mixtures was 14% greater than hybrid monocultures and 40% greater than glutinous monocultures.

The biodiversity gained from small farms is key to prevent extinction.
James K Boyce, Department of Economics & Political Economy Research and Environmental research at the University of Massachusetts, July 2004, “A Future for Small Farms? Biodiversity and Sustainable Agriculture”. Political Economic Research Institute, ideap/wp86.html
There is a future for small farms. Or, to be more precise, there can be and should be a future for them. Given the dependence of ‘modern’ low-diversity agriculture on ‘traditional’ high-diversity agriculture, the long-term food security of humankind will depend on small farms and their continued provision of the environmental service of in situ conservation of crop genetic diversity. Policies to support small farms can be advocated, therefore, not merely as a matter of sympathy, or nostalgia, or equity. Such policies are also a matter of human survival.
The diversity that underpins the sustainability of world agriculture did not fall from the sky. It was bequeathed to us by the 400 generations of farmers who have carried on the process of artificial selection since plants were first domesticated. Until recently, we took this diversity for granted. The ancient reservoirs of crop genetic diversity, plant geneticist Jack Harlan (1975, p. 619) wrote three decades ago, ‘seemed to most people as inexhaustible as oil in Arabia.’ Yet, Harlan warned, ‘the speed which enormous crop diversity can be essentially wiped out is astonishing.’
The central thesis of this essay is that efforts to conserve in situ diversity must go hand-in-hand with efforts to support the small farmers around the world who sustain this diversity. Economists and environmentalists alike by and large have neglected this issue. In thrall to a myopic notion of efficiency, many economists fail to appreciate that diversity is the sine qua non of resilience and sustainability. In thrall to a romantic notion of ‘wilderness,’ many environmentalists fail to appreciate that agricultural biodiversity is just as valuable – indeed, arguably more valuable from the standpoint of human well-being – as the diversity found in tropical rainforests or the spotted owls found in the ancient forests of the northwestern United States.

Poverty is a form of structural violence that is equivalent to an ongoing nuclear war against the poor; it is also the root cause of all other violence

James Gilligan professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for the Study of Violence, and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence. Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes. 1996. P. 191-196
The deadliest form of violence is poverty. You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons and mental hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcible and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterizes their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families and friends, you are forced to recognize the truth in Gandhi’s observation that the deadliest form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by without realizing that trying to understand them and their violent behavior in purely individual terms is impossible and wrong-headed. Any theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of men in maximum security prisons and hospitals for the criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are not where the major violence in our society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are far from being the main causes of most violent deaths. Any approach to a theory of violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence in this country. Focusing merely on those relatively few men who commit what we define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those structural causes of violent death that are far more significant from a numerical or public health, or human, standpoint. By “structural violence” I mean the increased rates of death, and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society’s collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting “structural” with “behavioral violence,” by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural violence differs from behavioral violence in at least three major respects. *The lethal effects of structural violence operate continuously, rather than sporadically, whereas murders, suicides, executions, wars, and other forms of behavioral violence occur one at a time. *Structural violence operates more or less independently of individual acts; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties, voters) whose decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for others. *Structural violence is normally invisible, because it may appear to have had other (natural or violent) causes. The finding that structural violence causes far more deaths than behavioral violence does is not limited to this country. Kohler and Alcock attempted to arrive at the number of excess deaths caused by socioeconomic inequities on a worldwide basis. Sweden was their model of the nation that had come closes to eliminating structural violence. It had the least inequity in income and living standards, and the lowest discrepancies in death rates and life expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy in the world. When they compared the life expectancies of those living in the other socioeconomic systems against Sweden, they found that 18 million deaths a year could be attributed to the “structural violence” to which the citizens of all the other nations were being subjected. During the past decade, the discrepancies between the rich and poor nations have increased dramatically and alarmingly. The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those by genocide—or about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000) deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. Structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide to war and genocide). The question as to which of the two forms of violence—structural or behavioral—is more important, dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each other, as cause to effect.


Without increased agriculture war is inevitable.
International Herald Tribune, June 17, 1999, Jimmy Carter, “First Step Toward Peace Is Eradicating Hunger”, http://www.ifpri.org/2020/newslet/nv_0999/nv0999j.htm
Why has peace been so elusive? A recent report sponsored by Future Harvest and generated by the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo examines conflicts around the world and finds that—unlike that in Kosovo—most of today’s wars are fueled by poverty, not by ideology.
The devastation occurs primarily in countries whose economies depend on agriculture but lack the means to make their farmland productive. These are developing countries such as Sudan, Congo, Colombia, Liberia, Peru, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka—places with poor rural areas where malnutrition and hunger are widespread. The report found that poorly functioning agriculture in these countries heightens poverty, which in turn sparks conflict.
This suggests an obvious but often overlooked path to peace: Raise the standard of living of the millions of rural people who live in poverty by increasing agricultural productivity. Not only does agriculture put food on the table, but it also provides jobs, both on and off the farm, that raise incomes. Thriving agriculture is the engine that fuels broader economic growth and development, thus paving the way for prosperity and peace.
The economies of Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan were built on strong agriculture. But many developing countries have shifted their priorities away from farming in favor of urbanization, or they have reduced investments in agriculture because of budget shortages. At the same time, industrialized countries continue to cut their foreign aid budgets, which fund vital scientific research and extension work to improve farming in developing countries.
Unfortunately, much of the farming technology developed in industrialized nations does not transfer to the climates and soils of developing nations. It is not a priority for agricultural giants in affluent nations to focus on the poor regions of the world or to share basic research advances with scientists from poor nations.
This neglect should end. Leaders of developing nations must make food security a priority. In the name of peace, it is critical that both developed and developing countries support agricultural research and improved farming practices, particularly in nations often hit with drought and famine.
For example, the report finds that India, one of the world’s largest and poorest nations, has managed to escape widespread violence in large measure because the Indian government made food security a priority.
Beginning in the 1960s, farmers in India were given the means to increase their agricultural output with technology packages that included improved seeds, fertilizers, irrigation and training. Today India no longer experiences famines as it did in the first half of this century. India’s food security contributes to its relative political stability.
While food is taken for granted in industrialized countries, many parts of the world—sub-Saharan Africa and large parts of Asia, for example—suffer serious food shortages. Today, per capita food production in sub-Saharan Africa is less than it was at the end of the 1950s. The report concludes that new wars will erupt if the underlying conditions that cause them are not improved.
The message is clear: There can be no peace until people have enough to eat. Hungry people are not peaceful people. The Future Harvest report is a reminder that investments in agricultural research today can cultivate peace tomorrow.


Advantage 2 Environment
There is a laundry list of reason current high yield agricultural practices destroy the environment.
Leo Horrigan, Robert S. Lawrence, and Polly Walker, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, May 2002, “How Sustainable Agriculture Can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial Agriculture”. Environmental Health Perspectives, vol 110, number 5, http://www.ehponline.org/members/2002/110p445-456horrigan/horrigan-full.html
Fertilizers. In 1998, the world used 137 million metric tons of chemical fertilizers, of which U.S. agriculture consumed about 20 million tons, or 15%. Between 1950 and 1998, worldwide use of fertilizers increased more than 10-fold overall and more than 4-fold per person (11,12). Tilman (13) estimated that crops actually absorb only one-third to one-half of the nitrogen applied to farmland as fertilizer.
Nitrogen that runs off croplands into the Mississippi River and its tributaries has been implicated as a major cause of a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico (14). This zone suffers from hypoxia--a dearth of dissolved oxygen (< 2 mg/L). Excess nutrients fuel algal blooms by speeding up the algae's growth-and-decay cycle. This depletes oxygen in the water, killing off immobile bottom dwellers and driving off mobile sea life such as fish and shrimp. In 1999, the Gulf's dead zone grew to 20,000 km2 (about the area of New Jersey), its largest recorded size (15).
Excess nitrogen in soil can lead to less diversity of plant species, as well as reduced production of biomass. Additionally, some ecologists contend that this decrease in diversity makes the ecosystem more susceptible to drought, although this issue has been controversial (16).
Chemical fertilizers can gradually increase the acidity of the soil until it begins to impede plant growth (17). Chemically fertilized plots also show less biologic activity in the soil food web (the microscopic organisms that make up the soil ecosystem) than do plots fertilized organically with manure or other biologic sources of fertility (18).
Pesticides. Each year the world uses about 3 million tons of pesticides (comprising herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides), formulated from about 1,600 different chemicals. Complete toxicity data are lacking, however, for most of these substances. In the United States, insecticide use increased 10-fold between 1945 and 1989 (19).
Some of the increase in pesticide use can be attributed to monocropping practices, which make crops more vulnerable to pests, but high-volume use also reflects the imprecise nature of pesticide application. Cornell entomologist David Pimentel (19) and colleagues stated:
It has been estimated that only 0.1% of applied pesticides reach the target pests, leaving the bulk of the pesticides (99.9%) to impact the environment.
That environmental impact can include widespread decline in bird and beneficial insect populations. This can disrupt the balance between predator and prey because pests often recover faster from pesticide applications than do the predators that normally keep pest populations under control (20). Pesticide runoff and airborne pesticide "drift" pollute surface waters and groundwater.
Some of the more disturbing findings on pesticide impact are as follows:
The number of honeybee colonies on U.S. farmland dropped from 4.4 million in 1985 to < 1.9 million in 1997, in large part due to direct and indirect effects of pesticides. Exposure to pesticides can weaken honeybees' immune systems--making them more vulnerable to natural enemies such as mites--and can also disrupt their reproduction and development (21,22). Honeybees are involved in the pollination of at least $10 billion worth of U.S. crops (23), providing farmers with an essential "natural service."
A study in the St. Lawrence River Valley in Quebec, Canada, suggests a link between pesticides and developmental abnormalities in amphibians. Among other deformities, researchers observed frogs with extra legs growing from their abdomens and backs, stumps for hind legs, or fused hind legs (24). Other studies suggest that amphibian deformities may be caused by UV-B radiation (25) or parasites (26).
Pesticide exposures have compromised immune function in dolphins, seals, and whales (27).
Because of the widespread use of pesticides, many target species--whether insects or plants--develop resistance to the chemicals used against them. The number of insect species known to display pesticide resistance has increased from < 20 in 1950 to > 500 as of 1990. Meanwhile, scientists have identified 273 plant species that exhibit herbicide resistance (28,29).
Soil. Land degradation--and in particular, the deterioration of soils--is one of the most serious challenges facing humankind as it attempts to feed a growing population. It takes anywhere from 20 to 1,000 years for a centimeter of soil to form (30), yet the United Nations has estimated that wind and water erode 1% of the world's topsoil each year (31).
In 1990, Oldman et al. (32) estimated that since World War II, poor farming practices had damaged about 550 million hectares--an area equivalent to 38% of all farmland in use today.
More than 30 years ago, the U.S. Soil Conservation Service recommended that farmers reduce soil erosion to no more than 5 tons of topsoil per acre per year (33). Between 1982 and 1997, the average erosion rate fell from 7.3 tons per acre per year to 5 tons (34).
Industrial agriculture also endangers soil health because it depends on heavy machinery that compacts the soil, destroying soil structure and killing beneficial organisms in the soil food web (35).
Free-range cattle can have a positive influence on natural ecosystems when they graze in a sustainable fashion. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service found that moderately grazed land (one cow per 16 acres) had more biodiversity than did ungrazed or heavily grazed land (36).
When animals graze land heavily they can also cause soil erosion by compacting the soil and stripping the land of vegetation that holds soil in place. Feedlot cattle (and industrial animal agriculture in general) destroy topsoil because growing grain for this industry requires so much cropland.
Land. Most of the world's arable land either is in use for agriculture or has been used up by (unsustainable) agriculture, most often because once-fertile soil has been degraded or eroded (37). The world's supply of arable land per person has been declining steadily (Figure 1).
An extreme example of land degradation is the phenomenon known as desertification, which the United Nations has defined as "land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities" (38). The annual global cost of desertification has been roughly estimated at $42.3 billion (39).
Desertification reduces the amount of land available for agriculture. Agriculture can contribute directly to desertification through poor agricultural practices such as overcultivation, overgrazing, and overuse of water, and indirectly when land is deforested to create new cropland or new pastures for livestock. According to the Worldwatch Institute, almost 20 million km2, or 15% of the all land surface, may already be experiencing some degree of desertification (40).
In the past, increasing demand for grain has been met by two means: increasing the amount of land used to grow grain and increasing the yields per land unit. Both avenues to higher grain production have become more constrained in recent years (41).
The discussion of grain supplies sometimes leaves out the impact of meat production and consumption on these calculations. A reduction in meat consumption would help alleviate land scarcity because 37% of the world's grain, and 66% of U.S. grain production, is fed to livestock (42).
Land planted in cereal grains produces 2-10 times as much protein for human consumption as land devoted to beef production; for legumes the ratio is anywhere from 10:1 to 20:1 (43). Yet, in the competition for land in poorer countries, the cattle industry sometimes crowds out subsistence farmers, who are then forced to grow food on marginal land. Often, that land is steep and susceptible to erosion when cultivated (44).
Water. Agriculture affects water resources in two ways: irrigating fields using surface waters or aquifers diverts water from other potential uses; and when farming practices pollute surface waters and aquifers, they reduce the amount of water that is suitable for other uses.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has blamed current farming practices for 70% of the pollution in the nation's rivers and streams. The agency reports that runoff of chemicals, silt, and animal waste from U.S. farmland has polluted more than 173,000 miles of waterways (45).
Agriculture accounts for about two-thirds of all water use worldwide, far exceeding industrial and municipal use (46) (Figure 2). In many parts of the world, irrigation is depleting underground aquifers faster than they can be recharged. In other cases, agriculture depends upon "fossil aquifers" that mostly contain water from the last ice age. These ancient aquifers receive little or no recharge, so any agriculture that depends upon them is inherently unsustainable.

Environmental degradation leads to extinction.
John Cairns, Jr., department of biology, Virginia Polytechnic institute, 1998 (“Goals and Conditions for a Sustainable World” http://www.int-res.com/esepbooks/CairnsEsepBook.pdf) [O’Brien]
Sustainable use of the planet will require that the two components of human society’s life support system – technological and ecological – be in balance (Cairns, 1996). Holmberg et al. (1996) state the situation superbly: "A long-term sustainable society must have stable physical relations with the ecosphere. This implies sustainable materials exchange between the society and the ecosphere as well as limitations on society’s manipulation of nature." At present, persuasive signs indicate that the technological system is damaging the integrity of the ecological life support system (Cairns, 1997). By monitoring the condition or health of both systems, a benign coevolution of human society and natural systems would be possible (Cairns, 1994; 1995). However, sustainable use of the planet will require environmental management on unprecedented temporal and spatial scales. The attainment of sustainability faces considerable obstacles. A societal distrust of scientific evidence has arisen that ranges from a belief that science does not differ from other ways of knowing to a total misunderstanding of how science works. Also, one common belief is that quality of life is more closely associated with consumption or affluence than with environmental quality, and, consequently, that a maintenance of affluence is to be preferred over the maintenance of natural systems. This false choice arises from human society’s failure to recognize its dependence on natural systems for essential ecological services, such as maintenance of breathable air, drinkable water, the capture of energy from sunlight, and the provision of arable soils (e.g., Daily, 1997). Possibly, the same human ingenuity that people have relied on to solve local resource limitations could also be used to develop an environmental ethos that will enable humans to conserve the ecological capital (old growth forests, species diversity, topsoil, fossil water, and the like) upon which they now depend. Humankind has survived thus far by meeting short-term emergencies as they occurred. However, humans supposedly can be distinguished from other species by their awareness of the transience of individual lives and their own mortality. Extending this awareness to the possibility of human extinction might be enlightening. Wilson (1993) asks "Is humanity suicidal?": The human species is, in a word, an environmental hazard. It is possible that intelligence in the wrong kind of species was foreordained to be a fatal combination for the biosphere. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself. If human society destroys, by its own actions, the living components of Earth that maintain an environmental state favorable to human survival, human society hastens its own extinction. Protection of these ecological services extends the time that the human species can survive on Earth. By regulating the use of ecosystem services to a rate that does not destroy the ability of natural systems to produce them, more humans will live better lives over time. Towards this end, a number of steps can be undertaken.


Advantage Three: Every other impact possible
Here are 26 Impacts to monocropping.
Scot Nelson, PhD, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, May 16-19 2006, Poly- and Monocultures: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. http://www.agroforestry.net/events/afwksp2006/pres/Nelson_Monocrops_script.pdf [Bhattacharjee]
“Bad and Ugly” aspects of monocropping include: 1) Soil depletion and erosion; 2) Destruction of biological diversity; 3) Loss of rainforests; 4) Climate change; 5) Atmospheric degradation; 6) Pollution of water tables; 7) Destruction of coral reefs (sedimentation); 8) Plant disease epidemics of enhanced severity; 9) Famine, death; 10) Loss of agrarian way of life and displacement of agrarian populations; 11) Loss of seed biodiversity and plant genetic resources; 12) Desertification; 13) Poverty; 14) Nutrient imbalances in soils
More “Bad and Ugly” aspects of monocropping include: 1) Invasive species introduced
and/or established; 2) Draining of our precious aquifers; 3) Exploitation of laborers; 4)
Dependence on corporations; 5) Loss of traditional social structure and values; 6) Loss of
geographic and species interdependence; 7) Increased crop susceptibility to weather; 8) Poor land stewardship, land abandonment; 9) Extinction of native species; 10)Destruction
of culturally significant sites; 11) Evolution of cleared lands into real estate ventures; 12)
Increased use of pesticides.


Plan-

The United States federal government should create a marketing organization aimed at improving the sustainability of small farms in Sub-Saharan Africa to operate as part of USAID.

Contention three is solvency:

The plan is critical to enabling small farmers to continue production—only if they are able to compete in the market against agribusiness can they be successful.

Peter B.R. HAZELL, Development Strategy and Governance Division, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, 2005, “Is there a Future for Small Farms?” http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/action/showFullText?submitFullText=Full+Text+HTML&doi=10.1111%2Fj.0169-5150.2004.00016.x
Small farms have always been at a disadvantage in the market place. They only trade in small volumes, often have variable and substandard quality products to sell, lack market information, and have few links with buyers in the marketing chain. These inefficiencies can all too easily offset the efficiency advantages of small farms as producers. The problem has been exacerbated by market liberalization and globalization. Not only has the state been removed from providing many direct marketing and service functions to small farms, leaving a vacuum that the private sector has yet to fill in many countries (Kherallah et al., 2002), but small farmers must now also compete in ever more integrated and consumer-driven markets where quality and price are everything (Narayanan and Gulati, 2003). Small farmers will need to organize themselves to overcome these problems and to exploit the new opportunities that these market changes offer; otherwise they risk losing market access.
The private sector is emerging as a key player in linking larger-scale commercial farmers with markets (e.g., contract farming and supermarkets), but they have less interest and ability to deal with small-scale farmers on an individual basis. Voluntary producer organizations of various types will have important roles to play in filling this void and in linking small farmers to food processors, manufacturers, traders, supermarkets, and other food outlets (Kindness and Gordon, 2002). Such organizations can help serve businesses by providing an efficient conduit to reach small-scale producers, and help improve the quality and timeliness of small farmers' production and their access to agricultural research and extension, input supplies, and agricultural credit.
Unlike former state cooperatives that are widely discredited because of their poor performance and high cost, key design principles are organizations that are voluntary, economically viable, self-sustaining, self-governed, transparent, and responsive to their members. Supporting these kinds of organizations will require government and donor support, engaging with businesses and civil society groups. Producer-based organizations will need help in developing business and management skills, establishing information systems and connections to domestic and global markets, creating good governance practices, and creating the infrastructure to connect small farmers to finance and input supply systems.
Public policy can help ensure improved market access for small farmers by putting in place institutions to deliver finance, reduce risks, build social capital of producers and traders, transmit market information, grade and certify goods, and enforce contracts (Gabre-Madhin, 2001). Infrastructure investments are also crucial; the farmers least likely to benefit from globalizing markets are those who are more distant from roads and markets (Narayanan and Gulati, 2003).\



US farming policy is the key reason Africans are struck by poverty and only the US can reverse this, international organizations don’t work
Marian Tupy and Christopher Preble, policy analyst with the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, 6/17/05, Reason Magazine, “Trade, Not Aid.” [Bhattacharjee]
When British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with President Bush last week, he urged the United States to increase substantially its aid to Africa. Pressure on Mr. Bush is likely to multiply over the coming weeks as he prepares to depart for the G8 summit in Scotland. Despite political pressures, increasing the U.S1. foreign aid budget would be a mistake. The true cause of Africa's poverty is the continent's long history of crippling misgovernance—a problem that is exacerbated by rich countries' trade protectionism, particularly with respect to agriculture.
While advocates of current market-distorting agricultural policies do not intend to harm developing nations, the collective effect of U.S. farm policies is devastating for producers of agricultural goods worldwide. American farm policies might provide short-term benefits for agricultural producers in the U.S., but those benefits are more than offset by the cost to American consumers who pay higher taxes to support the U.S. farmers and higher prices for agricultural products. Meanwhile, U.S. tariffs, quotas, and export subsidies exacerbate poverty in regions like sub-Saharan Africa where people are heavily dependent upon agriculture.
The frustration and despair caused by these policies in turn undermine American security. People who are dependent upon agriculture for their survival often have limited access to information. Unfamiliar with the historical and economic rationale behind U.S. agricultural policies, those individuals perceive U.S. farm policies to fit neatly within a competing narrative crafted by doomsayers who claim that the United States seeks to keep the rest of the world shackled in poverty. Protestations to the contrary from U.S. government officials typically fall on deaf ears.
U.S. agriculture policy undermines U.S. efforts to alleviate poverty because it drives down global agricultural prices, which in turn cost developing countries hundreds of millions of dollars in lost export earnings. The losses associated with cotton subsidies alone exceed the value of U.S. aid programs to the countries concerned. The British aid organization Oxfam charges that U.S. subsidies directly led to losses of more than $300 million in potential revenue in sub-Saharan Africa during the 2001/02 season. More than 12 million people in this region depend directly on the crop, with a typical small-scale producer making less than $400 on an annual cotton harvest. By damaging the livelihoods of people already on the edge of subsistence, U.S. agricultural policies take away with the right hand what the left hand gives in aid and development assistance.
Some want to correct that problem by increasing foreign aid, but transfer payments have failed to stimulate economic growth in Africa where the average income per person is 11 percent lower today than it was in 1960. State-to-state aid is inefficient because it is often based on geopolitical considerations, not on economic criteria. As a consequence, the least deserving regimes often obtain aid. International organizations such as the World Bank are also largely ineffective. In 2000, for example, the bipartisan Meltzer Commission found that the World Bank's aid projects failed 55 to 60 percent of the time.
There is yet another practical problem with the "subsidies plus aid" approach. It forces taxpayers to pay twice—once to sustain the inefficient subsidies, and then again to pay for aid programs to those countries harmed by such policies. William R. Cline, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development, estimated that global trade liberalization would save the developed nations $141 billion a year and deliver economic benefits worth $87 billion a year to developing countries.
To the extent that U.S. security depends upon the expansion of liberal democratic institutions and free market economics, U.S. policymakers must be particularly sensitive to those policies that exacerbate poverty in the developing world. As Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni stated during his 2003 meeting with President Bush, "I don't want aid; I want trade. Aid cannot transform society."
Development economists have stressed this message for years. U.S. subsidies and protectionism are particularly galling for those countries that have tried to make market reforms work, only to see their producers undercut by subsidized goods in the "free" world market. Even though the United States is hardly the worst offender in the developed world when it comes to unfair trading practices, the United States should lead by example and eliminate its market-distorting agricultural policies. They are damaging to the interests of most Americans, and they render useless U.S. efforts to alleviate poverty in the poorest corners of the globe.


USAID in market integration helps small farms and has a multiplier effect.
MSU Agricultural Economics, November 17 2000, “Synthesis of the USAID, Bureau for Africa Workshop for Agriculture, Environment, Private Sector and Food for Peace Officers”, http://www.aec.msu.edu/agecon/fs2/africanhunger/povertyreduction.pdf
Market-oriented agricultural intensification on small farms promotes poverty reduction and has a multiplier effect. Small farmers who have entrepreneurial drive and openness to new ideas can participate in profitable free market activities. Through targeted investments, USAID assists in reducing transaction costs and increasing returns for farmers who work together in groups and partner with progressive agribusinesses. As incomes increase, farm families buy services and products from non-farm enterprises, generating additional employment in the community and helping more households out of poverty. Successful farmers encourage other rural families by demonstrating the advantages of new technologies and modern livelihoods.


Plan Key to Change Current US Policies
US Congress Department of Technology, September 1988, “Enhancing Agriculture in Africa: A Role for US Development Assistance”, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_3/DATA/1988/8814.PDF
The United States has the potential to play a major role in enhancing low-resource agriculture in Africa, but whether this role will be pursued to its full extent has yet to be determined. The decisions made by Congress and executive branch agencies will be important in determining the U.S. role.

The US is key—USAID programs are the best at integrating small farms into the global marketplace—they can make small farms competitive.

Nelson Edwards, Matt Tokar, and Jim Maxwell, 1997 “Agribusiness Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Optimal Strategies and Structures,” final report, from USAID’s Bureau for Africa, Google scholar
A fourth type of intervention that might have applicability across the six countries studied, and possibly across most sub-Saharan Africa countries, is boosting small entrepreneurs’ economies of scale and strengthening their linkages with market channels, either exporters or foreign importers. There were mixed findings as to the applicability of association development even though, generally, it is a useful mechanism for giving ISMEs the critical mass necessary to deal with powerful and demanding market channels. Whatever their level — producers, marketing organizations or exporters — and whatever strategy or set of strategies they are pursuing, private-sector-led groupings have obvious advantages in achieving optimum structure for small and medium size enterprises in NTAEs — as long as they are properly managed. The most effective way to treat this kind of intervention is on a country-specific basis, as discussed in the individual country chapters in the Appendices of this report. This kind of intervention would generally be best delivered in the form of technical assistance to strengthen the sustainability and institutional capacities of appropriate intermediary organizations and associations that are aimed at strongly linking producers and exporters. The prerequisites for the formation of associations should be that the relevant product strategy is demand-driven, and that the association is member-driven, with capacities for effective management and monitoring and assessment. One form of association that is recommended for several countries included in this survey is a sustainable provider of integrated services: technical, financial and managerial. USAID has valuable experience in designing and setting programs that have many of the components needed for an integrated package, such as The Business Center in Tanzania, the Kenya KEDS project and the AMEX and TIP support projects in Ghana. This experience should be built upon, with private sector partners, with a view to creating sustainable agribusiness service centers on a commercial basis. An even more operational kind of entity for bringing ISMEs into advanced NTAE businesses is the proposed Kenya project to create a risk taking business for acquiring, packing, storing and marketing smallholders horticultural produce through a Nairobi auction to supply both exporters and foreign importers. This project is reportedly being considered for support from donors, for example, the Japanese.

Change in USAID projects is key to solve
Nelson Edwards, Matt Tokar, and Jim Maxwell, 1997 “Agribusiness Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Optimal Strategies and Structures,” final report, from USAID’s Bureau for Africa, Google scholar
Most of the existing USAID projects in the nontraditional export sector have focused on large and medium size rather than small enterprises, yet smaller businesses in many African countries wish to engage in non-traditional exports. However, the export market for horticulture, and especially floriculture, is both high value and highly competitive, and requires economies of scale which small enterprises do not have. To be successful in the horticultural trade, these enterprises, in the long run, must develop a capacity for effective market penetration, as well as the ability to overcome infrastructural and other constraints. At present there is no clear evidence that the arrangements under which these enterprises operate will permit them to become and remain viable in the highly competitive global market. Therefore, there is a need to understand the dynamics and constraints of non-traditional export marketing systems so that the conditions for small enterprise participation can be defined and facilitated.